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Comment by ashleycole | Hacker News Reader

I'm honestly too scared to do it. Not because I worry I'll be known as the guy who got GitHub banned in China (presumably after the rest of the world had to suffer from the inaccessibility caused by DDOS attacks that would likely last weeks (I mean the DDOS would last weeks, not the inaccessibility)), but because I worry the Chinese government would retaliate on me.

I agree that many Chinese don't share these values (although I do believe most of them choose to sacrifice their freedom because they don't really have a choice, and they feel it's justified by the country's growth), and that many innocent people would suffer. But I feel as long as the repo focus on spreading truthful history, then the government is to blame for whatever negative effect that occurs as a result of this.

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As previous poster I would advise against this. While your intentions might be good it is usually a bad idea to try to intervene in domestic affairs of another country. See Iraq/Iran/Libya/Egypt and other examples from Middle East. You might just anger the local population and fuel anti American sentiment.

Plus also the point about Chinese people not necessarily sharing your western liberal values is a good one. It's not true that western values are universal (they are just a product of our society and history) and perhaps they have slightly different set of values based on their society and history.

What's China gonna do about it? If someone lives in America, then they have nothing to worry about.

China can go ban github or something if they get upset over "foreign intervention". Then they will suffer all the economic damages that comes from that.

The reason to do something like this is PRECISELY because it makes those who do not support "western liberal values" upset.

But it also looks like a western person showed up and messed with their system, thereby purposefully sabotaging them and trying to get services blocked to the average Chinese?

Sabotaging a service by posting things on github that china doesn't like?

Seriously. Thats what this is about. People posting true stuff on the internet about china. I am not going to tiptoe around stuff like that, lol.

>What's China gonna do about it? If someone lives in America, then they have nothing to worry about.

If you're on the internet, then you can be targeted by anyone across the world, no matter where you live. Psyops/social engineering, identity theft, DDoS, doxxing, blackmail...

Oh no, china is going to come after me for posting information about them on the internet that they don't like!

Oh no, my anonymous github account will be hacked!

Seriously, this shit doesn't happen. There are too many people doing too many things in the world for a government across the world to do much of anything to anyone.

I am not ever going to live my life in fear of something dumb, like that. I am going to criticize and offend whatever world governments deserve to be offended.

If they don't like it, they can send their secret james bond assassins after me for posting stuff on the internet that hurt their feelings.

If someone actually did this successfully, then GitHub is put in a very tough spot where they have to choose between potentially losing the Chinese market, or begin to censor their platform, which could be the beginning of the end for them (I imagine GitLab would certainly take advantage of the situation).

China would most definitely retaliate; first by threatening and attacking GitHub, and if that didn't work then block the site completely. This would result in the Chinese companies/government losing billions, their tech progress could be severely hurt, and they would risk enraging the Chinese dev community.

It's very naive to think that the people responsible for creating and spreading this repo wouldn't be attacked, and while you might succeed in maintaining anonymity of the GitHub account (risky assumption), you most certainly wouldn't be able to remain anonymous when spreading it on Chinese services like QQ/WeChat/Weibo/etc (at least if an individual were to attempt to do this).

This kind of stuff has already played out. For years, people have been putting stuff on github, for the purpose of pissing off china. The most famous example is with GreatFire, an organization that helps people get around the great firewall of china. That is why I defended it as a very good example of a way to fight chinese censorship. Because people are literally already doing it, and the attempted attacks on those people, and github, have failed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_GitHub

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GreatFire

China did not win. Github did not get permanently blocked. They got DDoS for a week or something, but ultimately did not lose "billions".

The reason these temporary blocking attempts and attacks fail, is because github is a critical piece of infrastructure, and if a country blocks it, then it will suffer massive economic damage, and be forced to reconsider the block.

I very much hope that China continues to waste their time on these attacks. They will fail like they failed before. The more desperate they are, the more that they thrash around and fail to achieve any results, the more that people realize how little power they actually have to stop people from spreading information.

"This would result in the Chinese companies/government losing billions, their tech progress could be severely hurt, and they would risk enraging the Chinese dev community."

Good. Maybe then the Chinese citizens will do something about it. Chinese censorship mostly only hurts their own people (and by extension, it would then hurt the people in power), which will hurt them in the long term.

"It's very naive to think that the people responsible for creating and spreading this repo wouldn't be attacked"

The GreatFire people seem to be doing just fine, despite how much they have pissed off the chinese government. So empirically, as proven by facts, you are wrong.

I'm well aware of previous incidents, which is my basis for why GitHub is the platform that can cause so much damage to the Chinese government. We both seem to agree that China is very dependent on GitHub (perhaps the only western website they still rely on) and the economic damage of being forced to block it would be astronomical.

What I suggested and GreatFire is miles apart. Moreover, I'm not saying that throwing up some wikipedia articles about Tiananmen, Chairman Mao, etc. will result in China being forced to block GitHub or attack you. The path to success is to have the repo spread to tens of millions of Chinese locals. Regular people, not just the tech savvy that knows what a VPN is. It certainly won't be easy, especially considering they can easily shadowblock all links to the repo, the name of the repo, a picture with a link/QR, etc.

By the way, people have already been and continue to be tracked down and attacked for doing these kinds of things (a notably incident that reached the front page of HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10101469), so no, the assumption that people will be attacked for doing this is most definitely not wrong.

>Seriously, this shit doesn't happen. There are too many people doing too many things in the world for a government across the world to do much of anything to anyone

You don't think governments hack their enemies?

The US can extradite foreign citizens for committing crimes against American interests. Whose to say that China can't do the same one day?

Maybe the US would never agree, but imagine you are vacationing in some country that has good relations with China.

> See Iraq/Iran/Libya/Egypt and other examples from Middle East.

The first three were military interventions, very different from fighting censorship. I don't know enough about Egypt/Mubarak to say the level of Western involvement if any.

Also China is interfering in other governments - specifically Taiwan and HK - all the time. *

* Re: HK, China agreed to allow HK people to vote for the leaders by 2017 in return for sovereignty, and did not fulfill this promise, therefore there is no reason to recognize their sovereignty.

> Re: HK, China agreed to allow HK people to vote for the leaders by 2017 in return for sovereignty, and did not fulfill this promise, therefore there is no reason to recognize their sovereignty.

Sure there is, short of nuclear war there’s no way to get the PRC’s government out of Hong Kong.

And the PRC signed a treaty with the U.K., and the U.K.’s signature on a treaty is dirt. They guaranteed the indivisibility and independence of Cyprus and did nothing when the Greeks invaded, they guaranteed Ukraine’s borders along with Russia and the USA. Two things are always true in international relations; never give up your nukes and never trust the U.K. or USA.

> Sure there is, short of nuclear war there’s no way to get the PRC’s government out of Hong Kong.

It's entirely possible PRC could collapse. High growth rates and widespread corruption could easily cause a financial crisis that turns into a political one.

> They guaranteed the indivisibility and independence of Cyprus and did nothing when the Greeks invaded,

Turks, not Greeks

> they guaranteed Ukraine’s borders along with Russia and the USA

The Ukraine situation has much more nuance than you give credit for.

> and never trust the U.K. or USA.

As history shows, every superpower has interests, not friends.

You’re right, the Turks invaded before the Greeks managed to do so. I suppose the U.K. might have been the closest to sincere of the signatories to the Treaty of Guarantee. Let it be noted that the Turkish invasion was a response to a Greek government backed coup of the Cypriot government.

Fuck nuance. Never give up your nukes and never trust anyone for your vital interests.

See? Even Cyprus has nuance :)

The nukes in Ukraine were not Ukrainian - they were Soviet. Ukraine had no knowledge and resources to maintain them in usable state, they would simply expire anyway. So at least someone made a quick buck on that. This episode actually sums up behaviour of Ukraine's politicians in their 25 years of existence - whatever can be sold, will be sold, consequences for your co-citizens be damned. Ukraine as a state has no interests, vital or not - only politicians have.

On the other hand, do you wonder why North Korea wants nukes?

I don’t know whether Ukraine or Kazakhstan was the second largest of the Soviet republics but I would be very, very surprised if given their population they could not have at minimum cannibalised the Soviet nukes to build a domestic Ukrainian deterrent.

I don’t wonder why North Korea wants nukes. I know why. Iraq, Libya, Iran. Compare and contrast.

> The first three were military interventions, very different from fighting censorship. I don't know enough about Egypt/Mubarak to say the level of Western involvement if any.

They were ultimately military interventions but military solution is used always as last resort if you can't achieve your goal without it. West has been meddling in their domestic affairs and trying to influence these countries internally long before military invasions. And it continues to meddle and influence after war is over.

With Mubarak of course there was a lot of US involvement. Obama and Clinton supporter Muslim Brotherhood & Morsi heavily for some reason which ended in overthrowing of Mubarak and establishment of a theocratic state... which had to be then reversed in another revolution.

> Also China is interfering in other governments - specifically Taiwan and HK - all the time. *

From their point of view HK and Taiwan are part of China. On Western maps it shows Taiwan as an independent country but mainland Chinese consider it integral part of China.

> * Re: HK, China agreed to allow HK people to vote for the leaders by 2017 in return for sovereignty, and did not fulfill this promise, therefore there is no reason to recognize their sovereignty.

That's true. But countries break promises when convenient including western democracies.

Providing factual information to people is in no way intervening in the domestic affairs of another country.

Just like Russia in the recent US election cycle? Or is their propaganda and influence over a country somehow different?

Now you're getting off topic. Private citizens making factual information available is literally the opposite of propaganda.

It's no surprise that Russia tried to influence US politics. We need to do a better job of educating our citizens on critical thinking, including recognizing propaganda and fake news.

> Private citizens making factual information available is literally the opposite of propaganda.

This may be true if correctly done, but chances are good that if a state actor tried to Correct the Record, they would add their own political spin or only give information that helps the nation giving the information, and it would be widely seen as propaganda and looked at with disdain by most of the population.

Not all of what Russia released was just emotional manipulation. Russia released the DNC emails, which greatly increased political instability despite the fact that it was true. Russia is now seen as a meddler in our democratic process.

You don't think similar disdain would be seen towards Americans if we inject political instability into their country?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Europe

Would you say this is propaganda?

> Russia released the DNC emails

Which were massively abused to spread FUD.

But how you report the factual information is important.

For example, suppose a ship with 1000 people was sinking.

- 800 lives saved by swift action and heroic first responders.

- Botched government response results in 200 dead.

Equating invasions, bombings, and direct material support for local factions to "make some objective history available to people who want to read it" is extremely disingenuous.

Assuming you are an American, you have people in your own country that don't have the same values as you.

Question 1: Since they have the same access as you to "truthful history" why are their values different?

Question 2: Do you believe you could change their perspectives by introducing them to additional historical information?

I believe everyone deserve access to factual information and history, and it deeply saddens me when people abuse their power to suppress information, rewrite history, brainwash people, etc. China is not the only offender, but I'd say that they are the most dangerous one, and they even abuse their power to force other nations to submit themselves to their tyranny.

Everyone is unique, have different ideas, beliefs and thinking capabilities. It's only natural that, as such, people will process and respond to the same content in different ways.

I do believe that many Chinese people would form drastically different opinions if they had access to factual information. That being said, I must admit that my personal motivation would be less about helping the Chinese people, and more about attempting to limit China's power.

However, as I also mentioned in the other post, I'm not brave enough to even attempt to execute this idea. It's also important to anyone who might consider it that they would, if successful, endanger the life of themselves and their loved ones.

Thank you for taking the time to respond. The problem is that "factual information" can have a narrative that changes how events are interpreted [1].

An additional question: suppose you could limit the power of the alt-right, neo-nazies, and other racist agitators by limiting the flow of information.

Would also be against that?

1. http://www.theweek.co.uk/politics/22535/both-china-and-west-...

Agreed, but I believe you'll also agree that factual information with a narrative is better than fictitious information (and I'm struggling to think of an example where fictitious/censored information wouldn't have a narrative as well).

In an ideal world, then I'd say that the goal should be to educate the current and future generations to develop critical thinking capabilities, so that they'll hopefully laugh/cry/shake their head (or if they have more patience/heart than me, try to educate) when they read the kind of information you'd more often than not find on the_donald.

I honestly don't support the idea of censorship, and I believe everyone should have the right to privacy (I'm very saddened today to discover that Apple/NSA/Chinese government/etc is likely secretly recording my iPhone screen as I type this message). A part of me would even want to go as far as to say that if people wanted to spread hateful messages/illegal activity, then the solution shouldn't be to censor them, but rather to rely on the people to downvote and educate. Imagine a Reddit where mods were incapable of deleting/censoring any content. What do you think would happen? I personally have no idea, but I believe that there's a real chance these alt-right and racist aggregators wouldn't be able to succeed in creating a "safe haven" where they'd continue to have their hateful views reinforced. I recently read an interesting article about a neo-nazi that was forced to interact with a black police officer, resulting in a friendship that ended his hateful views. I strongly believe that if they couldn't censor rational voices (which I'd like to believe outnumber them by at least 10 to 1) then there's a high chance that their views could be corrected.

It would definitely be very difficult to achieve this when governments like Russia's appear willing to commit hundreds of millions of dollars (I'm assuming) in supporting hateful views. But I do (probably naively) believe that if people were highly educated then it should be possible to build a platform that could withstand these state attacks (e.g. value an upvote by a high karma user higher than a low karma user). Do you think the HN crowd would be negatively influenced (persuaded) by hateful flow of information? If the answer is no, doesn't that mean that high intelligence can withstand hateful/fake information and that there'd therefore be no need to censor it?

Censorship is dangerous because it can easily be abused. You may want to argue that with the right censorship tools then we could've prevented Trump from becoming the president. But what happens when a manic like him ends up in a position of control over said censorship tools? I'm guessing he'd do everything possible to become a dictator, to rewrite history, to spread his hateful views, to worsen the education and attempt to brainwash the students, etc. The way I see it, the only sustainable solution would be achieving a highly intelligent population.

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